My guild went into Black Temple last night as a group to run through it.It was a fun way to spend a Friday night. I even dressed Zee up in clothes from the era. I didn’t plan too far ahead so actually had no idea what bits and pieces I had in my appearance tab were pre-Black Temple so I threw on a PvP set I love and the staff from Nightbane in Kara. Maybe not chronologically correct but at least from that expansion.. it’s the thought that counts right?
I’d heard heaps of comments about crappy lock outs and fights that were pretty hard but it was hot-fixed before we went in there so we didn’t have to worry about the lockout bit, though I wasn’t sure what the fights were going to be like. Post hot-fix the fights seemed to be a little under tuned to be honest. I was sort of expecting it to be rather current raid like in difficulty and it really wasn’t. We did have 3-4 healers for just under 20 people but really most of time it was the trash mobs that hit harder than the actual bosses.
I really liked the Reliquary of the Lost fight, that seemed to have the tuning fairly on point and it was great to see the three different debuffs in action. The middle face, Essence of Desire, had a debuff that dealt damage back to anyone that damaged her so it was rather funny seeing people open up on her and then take the corresponding damage back. To counteract this, the debuff allowed healing to be increased by 100% but the trade off was a mana drain over time. I loved this mechanic a lot, it was a bit of a juggling act managing mana and putting out heals to cover people taking the damage from doing their dps. Shade of Akama though in comparison, was so ridiculous for healers. There was so little damage going out, every person pretty much remained at full heal throughout the whole boss fight. Was it like that back in the day I wonder?
Illidan himself was really interesting and it actually took a few goes to figure out the mechanics. And the fight went long enough that I could see the full 3 phases that you really miss going back in there at higher levels. It wasn’t until seeing his full fight that I realised just how many of the mechanics in the Nighthold Gul’dan fight are inspired by the Illidan fight. Makes sense really but was cool to see in action.
While it’s a nice idea to go see the older content without it being completely trivial when running through at max level, the current incarnation is a little boring because even with the scaling of items down, we still seem too overpowered. Compared with more modern fights which have pretty interesting mechanics, most of the fights were just stand still tank and spanks.
I did pick up a few items I didn’t have for transmog and seeing them pop up to 900 was cool but even at that ilvl they headed to the vendor so I don’t really need to think about going in there for gear. Reading a few blogs I can see the thought about why do it more than once floating around and to be honest I don’t think I would need to take my main through more than once but there has been new gear added for the 4 classes that weren’t around in BC to allow them specific transmog sets reminiscent of the BC era. If your account has the Warglaives of Azzinoth achievement and you defeat Illidan you can also unlock an account wide ach to give your demon hunters a new artifact appearance.
It was fun and if it only rolls around once every few months, it’s probably something I would consider going along. Not being as difficult as I was expecting was a little disappointing but the trade off would be making it more challenging and then no one really wanting to invest the time learning fights and mechanics that you only see for a brief period every few months. Not an easy balance to achieve. Overall I think it was probably pretty well done. I wonder if we’ll see more Time walking Raids in months to come.
Z is for Zeirah 
I had similar thoughts to you about the difficulty. But then I also remembered that BC raids were done with a spell-set of up to level 70. There are heaps more spells we’ve gotten over the years, and we got to keep them all going into that raid, even though they wouldn’t have been available then. In some ways I’d be curious to see what it would be like to go in with whatever spells we have available by level 70… but then I also think that toons these days have been built with full toolkit to 110 in mind, so it probably wouldn’t work out too well at all.
They have to make it “easy” so that it’s accessible to more people. Because whilst we managed to pretty much cruise through it all, other guilds and teams have not been able to. As stuck up as it sounds, we’re a bit ahead of the pack, so it was always going to be a bit easier for us anyway.
Chat aside, I had fun in there. I liked getting to experience fights for longer than 3 seconds. What I was disappointed by, though, was how terrible the loot drops were. I got 1 piece of gear drop for that entire raid. And I noticed that a lot of the gear that did drop for people was duplicated. i.e. the cloak that I had drop for me from 1 boss dropped for 2 other people as well. Same thing happened with a ring on another boss, and again with a mace from Illidan. I wanted to see more diversity in what dropped, and a bit of a higher drop rate. Because yes, even though we couldn’t really use it, it would still feel like I got more out of it by getting transmog pieces at least.
I’d still like to see more timewalking raids 🙂
I think the raid tuning was “just under Normal”. So, it is more like visiting an old city and taking a tour; which is probably the idea all along.
I wish they’d thinned out the trash and made the boss fights longer. The only mechanic that seemed to still do much was the teleport on Mother, but that fight was originally about shadow resist anyways. Our very first person with ghosts on Teron dropped them right in the raid which would have been a guaranteed wipe back in the day but didn’t seem to matter now. Shade of Akama was always the easy fight in the raid. It’s just about add control which used to be very different back then with threat. It was interesting to see again and I got my warglaives appearance but I don’t have much reason to do it again. I kind of wish I had tanked it on my druid for nostalgia sake, but I took my mage for a shot at gear. I did get to tank the mob on Council though at least lol.